Various types of work pieces utilized in vehicle and industrial applications have coatings to protect the underlying base materials from heat, corrosion, impacts, and the like. For example, some metal components of gas turbine engines that are exposed to high temperatures during operation, such as rotor blades, combustor liners, nozzles, shafts, pistons and the like, have thermal barrier coatings that provide thermal protection. The thermal barrier coatings include heat-resistant materials, such as ceramics.
The quality of the thermal barrier coating on a work piece impacts the operational lifespan of the work piece. Work pieces having higher quality thermal barrier coatings have longer operational lifespans than work pieces having lower quality thermal barrier coatings because the lower quality thermal barrier coatings may deteriorate more readily than the higher quality thermal barrier coatings. Variations in thermal barrier coating quality may be attributable to uncontrolled differences during a generally constant coating application process, such as slight changes in environmental conditions. Therefore, the same coating application process may produce thermal barrier coatings of different quality, but it is not known which of the work pieces have higher quality coatings and which of the work pieces have lower quality coatings. As a result, work pieces having higher quality coatings may be installed into the same machine, such as an engine, with work pieces having lower quality coatings. As described above, the lower quality coatings deteriorate quicker than the higher quality coatings. At the end of the lifespan of the work pieces having the lower quality coatings, an operator may disassemble the machine and replace all of the work pieces (e.g., all of the rotor blades of a rotor assembly) at the same time. This practice is inefficient and costly because it results in the premature disposal of work pieces that still have significant lifespan remaining attributable to higher quality thermal barrier coatings.